Louis Auchincloss

Louis Auchincloss, in full Louis Stanton Auchincloss, (born September 27, 1917, Lawrence, New York, U.S.—died January 26, 2010, New York City), American novelist, short-story writer, and critic, best known for his novels of manners set in the world of contemporary upper-class New York City.

Auchincloss studied at Yale University from 1935 to 1939 and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1941. He was admitted to the New York state bar that same year and began a legal career that would last until 1986.

For his first novel, The Indifferent Children (1947), Auchincloss used the pseudonym Andrew Lee, but by 1950 he was publishing stories under his own name. Noted for his stylistic clarity and skill at characterization, he became the prolific chronicler of life in the rarefied world of corporate boardrooms and brownstone mansions. As a novelist, Auchincloss was less interested in the excesses and intrigues of his characters than he was in their formative influences and personal limitations.

Several of his best novels, including The House of Five Talents (1960) and Portrait in Brownstone (1962), examine family relationships over a period of decades. Others, notably The Rector of Justin (1964) and Diary of a Yuppie (1987), are studies of a single character, often from many points of view. Auchincloss frequently linked the stories in his collections by theme or geography, as in, for example, Tales of Manhattan (1967) and Skinny Island (1987), which are set exclusively in Manhattan. Subsequent works include the novels Tales of Yesteryear (1994) and Education of Oscar Fairfax (1995) and a number of short-story anthologies, notably Three Lives (1993), The Anniversary and Other Stories (1999), and Manhattan Monologues (2002), all of which explore moral dilemmas of the upper class. Without straying far from the world of the wealthy, Auchincloss published Her Infinite Variety (2000), a novel set in 1930s New York about a woman fighting her way up the social ladder, and The Scarlet Letters (2003), a moral fable set in contemporary New England. East Side Story (2004) is loosely based on Auchincloss’s father’s family. Two more short-story collections followed these novels; then, at the age of 90, Auchincloss published The Headmaster’s Dilemma (2007), a novel about a noble headmaster at a New England prep school.

In addition to novels and short stories, Auchincloss published biographies of U.S. Presidents Woodrow Wilson (2000) and Theodore Roosevelt (2002). He also published The Man Behind the Book: Literary Profiles (1996) and Writers and Personality (2005), both collections of essays. He refrained from autobiography until the end of his life. A Voice from Old New York: A Memoir of My Youth was published in 2010, almost a year after his death at age 92. Auchincloss’s numerous honours include the National Medal of Arts (2005).